RIVERSIDE (California) PRESS-ENTERPRISE

October 24, 2008

Nun develops community centers to serve Coachella Valley's Duroville, other migrant-labor neighborhoods

By DAVID OLSON
The Press-Enterprise

The quotation on Sister Gabi Williams' office door illustrates how the Catholic nun approaches her work among the poor of the Coachella Valley.

"I have never met a person whose greatest need was anything other than real, unconditional love," the citation from the late psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross reads. "You can find it in a simple act of kindness toward someone who needs help."

Sister Gabi's work is rooted in love and building personal relationships with those she helps. And she always views others as her equal, not as someone to be pitied.

"There's a mutuality to the relationship," said Jeanette Arnquist, director of the Diocese of San Bernardino's Office of Social Concerns, for which Sister Gabi works. "It's not at all condescending or patronizing or reaching down from an ivory tower. ... She really has a respect for the dignity of everybody. A lot of people say that, but she's really aware of that, that everybody is special, that everybody is a unique child of God."

Arnquist nominated Sister Gabi, 59, for a national award from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that honors pastoral leaders who help immigrants, refugees, migrant workers and other people on the move. She was one of four winners honored at a July ceremony.

The conference was impressed by how Sister Gabi does more than give direct assistance to people, said Cecile Motus, assistant director of the conference's Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church. She brings people together so they can improve their own communities.

"The beauty of what Sister Gabi has done is it's not just her," Motus said. "She's created a network and brought resources to the community."

Motus singled out Sister Gabi's work at Desert Mobile Home Park, sometimes called Duros or Duroville.

The federal government is suing to shut down the park for alleged health and environmental violations, but Riverside County officials and residents want it to be improved, not closed. A federal-court trial on the case is scheduled to begin in December.

She also began the effort to build two small community centers: One inside Duros and another just outside the park, to also serve nearby mobile-home parks.

Between them, the centers will provide classes on parenting, financial management, computer literacy, mobile-home repair and English-as-a-Second-Language, along with day care, space for community meetings, and a quiet place for children to study and receive tutoring.

The centers stemmed from a meeting that Sister Gabi had with Duros residents in 2005, at which she asked them to describe services that could improve their lives. Residents are closely involved in planning the centers, and Sister Gabi contacted people from more affluent parts of the Coachella Valley to help raise money and sit on the board of one of the complexes.

"She is essential to this," said Tom Flynn, the court-appointed property manager of Duros. "She's the most trusted person in the eastern Coachella Valley. She knows everybody. She's always putting people together who can help."

On a recent afternoon at Duros, Sister Gabi was conferring with Flynn before a first-ever meeting of a Duros neighborhood association that she helped put together.

Sister Gabi doesn't like to talk about herself. Ask her about details of her life and she usually tries to shift the conversation to the people she works with. Ask her how she helps others and she emphasizes how the communities she works with help themselves.

Sister Gabi said she relies heavily on Duros community leaders like Leobardo Jiménez, a Eucharistic minister and member of the fledgling neighborhood association who helps identify for Sister Gabi which residents have the greatest needs for food, clothing and other assistance.

"I don't know what this place would be like without her," Jiménez said in Spanish as Sister Gabi sat in his trailer with a look of embarrassment on her face. "Thanks to God that he brought her here."

Before visiting with Jiménez, Sister Gabi stopped by a nearby mobile-home park to check in on a family that had called her several days before.

"How's your baby?" she asked Adelaida Zamora in Spanish. "Better than before, eh?"

Sister Gabi had visited Zamora, 23, in the hospital two months before, after she gave birth.

She and Sister Teresita Navarro -- who came to the Coachella Valley Sept. 1 to help Sister Gabi -- brought with them two donated handmade blankets.

Zamora later chatted with Sister Gabi outside her trailer and said the family was short on food. Like many other farmworkers in the mobile-home parks, husband Bartolo Gutiérrez, 25, was not able to find enough work to make ends meet this month, when relatively few crops are harvested.

Sister Gabi receives hundreds of phone calls a week on her home and office phones. Much of her work is helping residents navigate bureaucracies, so they know which agencies to turn to for medical, transportation or other assistance. Sometimes people just want someone who will listen to them.

The interactions are a two-way street. Sister Gabi said she has learned as much from the thousands of people she has assisted as they have from her.

She sees how residents are quick to help each other out in tough times and to share what little they have. She's learned to talk more slowly and be more patient.

She also sees the intense faith that guides people through their lives. As a nun, one of Sister Gabi's responsibilities is to provide spiritual guidance. But the people of the eastern Coachella Valley have also helped Sister Gabi grow in her own faith.

"I feel so enriched by their humbleness, their holiness," she said. "They are very holy people. It's not just about going to church. They are living out the Christian life. I'm learning from them on a deeper level."